


Touch me (remind me who I am)

by rumpelsnorcack



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-04 22:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11564655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumpelsnorcack/pseuds/rumpelsnorcack
Summary: Even though he’s protective of it, Isak’s family situation is allowed closest to the surface -- Isak uses it sometimes, allows people to see some of it as it gives a normality to his isolation.  It’s not unknown, after all, for families to be the way his is; everyone has a story about their families.A character study of Isak, basically looking at how he talks himself into the mindset he's in during the show (and how he gets himself out of it again).  Set during the time from s1 to s4.





	1. Sixteen years old, October 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another thing that outgrew its original concept. Basically, I wondered how the hell Isak got to a state where he's ready to soak up touch like a sponge when he's with Even while being so snappy and grumpy while with everyone else, and so this was born. It should be reasonably canon compliant, but some bits of the show I've only seen once so it may diverge a little. if anything is too egregiously different, please let me know so I can try to fix it.
> 
> More characters to be added as they wander into the story. 
> 
> Many thanks again to Sarah and Camilla for the beta reading and the guruing. You guys are the best!!

“You alright, bro?”  Jonas asks carefully.  

He’s looking at Isak as if he’s porcelain or something, and that just won’t do.  Isak needs to put him off, because of course he’s feeling like shit.  But it’s imperative that no-one knows that.  Not even Jonas.   _ Particularly _ Jonas.  So Isak goes for the easiest thing, the issue that hits at him but isn’t yet likely to destroy his relationships with his friends.

“Ummm, hmmm.  Yeah, I guess.  It’s … things are shit at home, you know?”

The look Jonas gives him is compassionate, but there’s something in it that shows he doesn’t get it.  How can he?  First, no-one really knows the mess that hides behind the faces of the perfect family his parents project to the world.  Jonas is closest to them, but even he sees the glossy shine on the top and doesn’t tend to look beneath.  ‘Shit’ is the closest Isak’s ever got to saying what’s on his mind, but since everyone sees the gloss, it’s hard to explain what that really means.  Most people assume it’s like all families, and ‘shit’ means they won’t give him pocket money or they make him do too many chores.  Most people don’t bother to look further.  And that’s okay.  Isak likes it that way.  What would they say, Jonas and Eva and everyone else, if they knew how distant everyone in his family is from each other?  If they knew how unlike all other families they are?  So he hides it under banter and smiles, all the pain he holds in his heart.  

Even though he’s protective of it, Isak’s family situation  _ is _ allowed closest to the surface -- Isak uses it sometimes, allows people to see some of it as it gives a normality to his isolation.  It’s not unknown, after all, for families to be the way his is; everyone has a story about their families.  But not everyone has the rest of it; not everyone has things like the ones that need to stay buried deep inside Isak.  That stuff can’t be allowed out, and Jonas can’t be allowed to push further than he already is.

“It’s nothing,” Isak says now, trying to play it down to push that look off Jonas’s face.  “Let’s go play FIFA.”

If he can pull this off, Isak promises he’ll do better,  _ be _ better at keeping himself smooth and hidden.  There’ve been too many times when he’s let his guard drop and shown how much he dislikes certain things being said about him.  He knows Elias is onto him, that he knows exactly how to needle Isak to make him react.  It’s just a matter of time before Jonas starts noticing the ways he reacts to Elias, too.  Jonas would change the way he treats Isak, and that can’t happen.   _ The gay guy.  Gay songs _ .  It all brands him as different, and it’s there in their words -- it’s obvious that the way they see him would change if they see right to the heart of him, so they can’t be allowed to know.  It’s imperative that Jonas doesn’t change.

Jonas slings his arm across Isak’s shoulders and pulls him in for a brief hug before letting go and running ahead, his laughter drifting back.  Isak stiffens as it happens, telling himself he shouldn’t care.  He doesn’t need this, he doesn’t.  The feeling of an arm around him, however, brief, shouldn’t make him feel that way.  And he shouldn’t desperately  _ want _ Jonas to touch him again, either.

Isak sinks into his own thoughts as they walk, helpless to avoid the memories that flood him whenever he allows himself to think about all this.  He avoids them, usually, the thoughts.  But something today has cracked him open and allowed the memories to spill out.  They are so vivid, too; each one shimmering so brightly before him.  Isak tries to shrug them off as he walks, but they invade anyway.  He resigns himself to it; sometimes it’s better when he lets them in than when he tries to fight.  He just hopes Jonas doesn’t notice him spacing out while they walk.

Isak can remember the feeling so clearly.  If he closes his eyes he can feel the warm weight of the arms surrounding him, the scent of his mother’s perfume as she squeezed him closer.  That scent smelled like safety, and every time he smells it he’s reminded of the way he felt in her arms that long-ago day.  A wistful nostalgia fills him as he remembers.  

He’d been three years old, it was Christmas, and his mother was at her sparkling best.  That was before.  Before everything went to shit.  Before his mother was lost to her own mind, or at least before Isak noticed that she wasn’t quite like other kids’ mothers.  Isak had given her his gift, a homemade card he was so proud of, and she’d laughed, her eyes lighting up and shining with joy.  Then she’d leaned forward, wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “thank you,” into his ear.  Her arms had lingered, fingers pressing comfort into his back and he’d squeezed back, wanting to soak up all the love that she was pouring into him.  

If he’d known that there would be very few of her hugs left for him, Isak might have tried to live in that moment for a little longer.  He might have tried to etch it more firmly into his memory.  But he didn’t know, and he was too young to understand even if he had known.  It had felt late, and Isak had been tired, so he hadn’t appreciated the hug the way he might have on another day and at another time.  So eventually he’d squirmed a little, wriggled his way out of her arms and run off to play with the cousins who were scattered through the house. 

Isak looks back now with a sort of bleak despair, trudging along just behind Jonas.  It’s not that he actively goes round all day desperate for hugs or anything; that would be … that would be a bit weak and unmanly ( _ gay _ ), wouldn’t it?  But there’s something deeply nostalgic in the idea of someone holding him like they want to give him the world.  There’ve been a few times when Isak has really really needed something, when he’s been feeling off kilter for whatever reason and sought some sort of solace.  But in each of those moments he didn’t get what he’d wanted or needed, and he’s learned, by now, to try to stop wanting it.  He’s learned to try to stop needing human touch.  Not in that way, anyway.  Wanting or needing that sort of thing isn’t really rational, after all, and Isak is nothing if not a rational being.  So he has learned, over time, to think away any wishes of that sort.  To find the logic in keeping his distance from people.  It makes life easier, after all, to focus on study and hanging out with friends rather than on anything that might be missing in his life.  

If Jonas wonders about Isak’s distance on the walk home, he doesn’t push.  Maybe he does know something about Isak’s home life, then.  Maybe Isak isn’t hiding the stress and the worry as well as he thinks he is.  That thought strikes terror into his chest, turning him icy cold in an instant.  Perhaps he needs to redouble his efforts to appear normal; that’s the only way to be safe, after all.

They play FIFA, and they laugh.  Isak’s weary heart thaws a little, and he lets himself feel safe here.  Here in this bubble with Jonas, things are okay.  Isak can forget his home, forget his odd parents and their painful politeness to each other and sometimes even to him.  Isak can forget all that other stuff, too, ignore the way he feels around girls.  Here at Jonas’s Isak can pretend, just for a while, that his life is as normal as everyone else’s.

But Jonas’s little brother is around and irritating the hell out of Isak.

“Get off, you little brat, that’s my controller,” Isak yells as the kid wrestles the plastic out of his hands and laughs in delighted victory.

“Ah, lay off, Isak.  Let him have a turn,” Jonas says, eventually.

“ _ You _ let him have a turn,” Isak says, pouting and throwing himself back against the couch cushions in a huff, but Jonas just laughs and pushes him.  Isak hates this.  

Things always intrude, somehow, into any peace that he manages to create for himself and his friend.  And yeah, it makes sense that Jonas is protective of the boy, but that idea doesn’t help.  There’s no-one to do that for Isak.   _ He _ has to do it alone.  Days like this just emphasise that.  He has love, he knows he does (his parents say it often enough that intellectually he knows it’s true), but it’s a distant sort of love, calm and cool.  There’s no fire to any of it, and Isak has learned to be self-reliant.  No need for hugs or for help.

So he swallows his pain and anger, and forces a laugh that must sound genuine to the others as they carry on with their game.  He gets another turn and obliterates Jonas before the kid brother takes him down in the final round.  It’s enough, this time he has with these people.  It has to be; it’s all he’s allowed.


	2. Sixteen years old, November 2015

“Hey, girl,” Isak chirps as he slides into Eva’s room through her window.

“Hey, Isak,” she replies, looking up from the computer she’s currently hovering over.  Her voice is wan and tired, and Isak’s heart clenches a little as he thinks about why.  He knows he’s at least partly to blame for the way she feels right now.  If he had encouraged her to tell Jonas, she’d probably be ecstatically happy.  Instead, she’s pale and withdrawn.

She’s sitting in her bed, her posture relaxed, but there’s something behind her eyes that speaks to Isak.  Ever since she’d confessed to him what she’d done, Eva has been anxious and not her normal self.  

She manages a weak smile, which deepens when Isak opens his arms to her as he climbs onto the bed and she snuggles into him.  He sighs against her hair, enjoying the warm weight of her arms around his neck and the feeling of her hair against his cheek.

Now that he’s sixteen, Isak has taken certain messages to heart.  Or more specifically, Isak has worked out why, logically, those messages are correct and why he must therefore stick to them.  No-one can know the things he suspects about himself, and it’s only more imperative whenever someone casts a slur at him, or sneers at sharing a room with the gay guy.  He can’t let himself need touch, not the way other people do; it’ll only prove what everyone secretly thinks.  So he hides it all away, and scolds himself.  

There’s only one truly acceptable time to need people, to hold people (particularly if you do suspect things about yourself that you may not be comfortable sharing with others), and that’s if you’re in a relationship with them, or if the person you’re holding is a girl and you’re comforting her.  So Isak takes advantage of that loophole, and hugs Eva when she needs it.  She seems to need it a lot.  Her need is almost enough to give Isak what he wants, almost.  

Isak pulls her closer to him, and lets her sigh out her fear on his chest.  She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to.  It’s all there in her trembling limbs and in the way her hands grip his hoodie.  Hating himself for the pleasure he gets out of her pain, Isak holds her tight and whispers endearments against her hair.

At first, when Eva had come into his life as the girlfriend of Jonas, Isak had been consumed with jealousy.  Not just because she had Jonas and was dominating the time he’d gifted to Isak in the past, but because she got to hold him.  She would wrap her arms around him, they’d sigh in mutual recognition of how nice it was, and the jealousy would burn through Isak because he wanted that, yearned for it with an intensity that was a bit overwhelming on the few occasions he allowed himself to think about it.  

It wasn’t long, however, before Eva became close to him, too.  It wasn’t long before she’d come to him with her worries and complaints about how much she missed her friends, how unhappy she was and how, while she loved Jonas, she felt like she was being stifled under the force of his personality.  If Isak sometimes wished it was Jonas he was holding, he didn’t let on, not at the risk of losing the way hugging felt.

Isak reluctantly lets Eva out of his arms when her mother calls down to her, wanting her to come upstairs and have some family time.  Family time that Isak knows involves cuddling on the couch, and questions about Eva’s wellbeing.  She finds it irritating, invasive even, but Isak feels all the weight of his jealousy.  Another memory burns through him, this one harder to justify.  There’s no easy explanation this time.  It’s a memory that baffles him whenever he thinks about it.  When Isak was ten and had broken his leg, the message he’d heard had been clear. 

“Isak, come on.  You don’t need to cry.  Be strong, little man.  You’ll be fine.”

He’d tried hard to stifle the tears, to live up to the jovial tone in his father’s voice.  The look of pride in his eyes when Isak had managed to choke back the sobs and smile valiantly at the other players had stayed with Isak.  This, then, was what men did.  They don’t cry or need trifling things like hugs from their mothers -- or worse, their fathers.  Men grit their teeth, they bear the pain stoically, they tell everyone they’re fine, that it doesn’t hurt … or at least that it doesn’t hurt much.  They limp off the field, and they don’t whimper in pain and a desperate need for solace when their leg is set and then placed in a cast.  

Over the long, boring itchy months that had followed, it was impressed on Isak that men don’t complain.  They might be given soup or some other treat to make them feel better, but that didn’t extend to hugs or other physical forms of comfort.  Because men don’t need any of that nonsense.  That sort of thing is for women and children, and has no place in the life of a real man.  

This memory is harder to rationalise.  Other people’s dads don’t talk like this.  Other people are more open and they can touch and hug their families.  Other people aren’t told how to be a man in a very particular way.  He watches his friends with their fathers, and he knows it doesn’t  _ have _ to be this way.  It bugs Isak sometimes, but he brushes it off.  That’s just his family, and he’s come to accept it even while the differences baffle him at times.

Because his family has impressed these ideas on Isak, he has since learned to depend on these times when Eva comes to him.  It’s not the same when he hugs her, it doesn’t feel safe and secure and like home the way his mother’s always had, or the way he imagines Jonas’s would.  It doesn’t have the safe surety of home that Isak occasionally admits to himself that he’s looking for.  But it’s something, and it gives him something akin to that old remembered feeling.  So it’s not just because he wants to speed up, or even catalyse, any split between Jonas and Eva that Isak does what he does.  It’s not just because of feelings he can’t allow himself to express.  It’s at least partly because he’s become addicted to the feeling of Eva in his arms.  

When she calls him and he comes to her house, he doesn’t feel good about himself, exactly.  In fact, he’s disgusted by what he’s chosen to do, but the tremors running through her, the way she’s clutching him in her sorrow and fear (so much more intense in this moment than it usually is), those are so compelling that Isak can’t bring himself to admit to anything.  Behind his fear of losing Jonas, of having everything come to light in some destructive way, Isak can’t bring himself to do anything which will lose him this feeling.

“It’s okay, Eva,” he whispers against her hair.  “It’ll all be fine.”

He hates himself for doing this, for letting this happen to her.  But the jealousy that had been sitting in his heart since she’d got together with Jonas, combined with the delightful feeling of having his arms around someone, all contribute to keeping his mouth shut.  He hopes it will last, and that somehow this won’t come out, that it won’t come back to bite him.  But he’s reckless enough right now, and desperate enough for this feeling Eva creates, that he ignores the unpleasant possibilities ahead of him and lives in this one golden moment.

There’s a fragile peace Isak achieves over the next little while, where neither Eva or Jonas knows what he’s done and where they both still treat isak like he’s someone to rely on.  Like he’s something special.  His family life breaks down, his father cuts and runs leaving Isak isolated and unsure of his place in the world, and with no idea how to help hi increasingly unstable mother.  Jonas is there for him in most of the important ways, and Isak appreciates that.  There’s no touch, but there’s compassion and support.  It’s enough.  Isak’s not okay, he feels like he’ll never be okay, but at least the horrible secret he’s keeping is safe from the outside.  No-one knows what he’s done, and for a shining moment Isak thinks he’s got away with it and that he can move on, that he can keep hugging Eva and keep everything chill and smooth.

But that’s not to be.  Eva confronts him, it all falls apart, and Isak is left bereft.  He knows he hasn’t got anyone to blame but himself, and that hurts in a way he has no words to describe.  In one way, he has everything he’d always wanted.  He has Jonas to himself again, he has his attention and there’s no girlfriend getting in the way.  But Isak has lost a lot.  He’s lost Eva and her friendship, and he’s lost the trust of almost everyone around him.  

Even while he knows it’s not his fault, and on top of everything coming home to roost with Eva and Jonas, Isak also has to face the loss of his family.  Somewhere deep inside, Isak had always assumed that things would get better, that his mother would get well and that his parents would start to act like parents again.  So facing up to the gaping hole in his life that exists now, on top of the loss of Eva and everything she’s come to mean to him, well … that feels like the punishment he deserves for trying to find a feeling he isn’t made for from people who aren’t made for him. 


	3. Sixteen years old, March 2016

Time moved on, after all that stuff with Eva and Jonas, and so did Isak.  He mended things with Eva as well as he could, which is to say not very well at all.  But they’re back in a place where they can talk and be around each other without the naked hurt on her face stabbing at him, so he figures that’s as good as he’s going to get.  He misses her true friendship madly, though.  There was some sort of balance when they were three friends -- when Isak was third wheel to Jonas and Eva -- because at least he got some sort of physical affection.  Eva’s always been a very touchy person and Isak feels the loss of that part of her keenly.  

Now, he’s back in a place where it’s not cool, not normal ( _ gay) _ , to want to hug someone.  He’s in a place where snarky comments, banter and laughter have to take the place of genuine affection, because anything genuine is dangerous ( _ gay _ ).  Jonas is great; he’s the best friend Isak could ever want, even if he’s unattainable and distant in so many of the ways that matter most.  But Jonas never seems to miss the way it feels to have someone’s arms around him.  Maybe, Isak thinks in his bitterest moments, that’s because he gets it elsewhere -- from his parents in the casual way they squeeze shoulders or drop kisses onto foreheads, and from the numerous girls he hooks up with.  

Isak tries it out.  Not the parents thing, obviously, because his are physically distant even as they claim to love him (they do love him; he knows that, he does).  With his father gone, Isak has no bridge between himself and his mother.  Her behaviour is baffling and sometimes scary.  Her obsession with religion and religious texts cuts him deep, because how would she react if he ever tells her the things he suspects?  If he knows he has love now, however cold and distant, he can’t know that he’ll have it later.  It’s not that she ever focuses on the passages dealing with people like … well, people who might not like girls the way they should.  But they do come up, at times, and when they do they hang like a solid barrier between them.  So, Isak does what he does best and puts on a lively face, a cheerful mask and hides himself from her.

No, what isak does, to get the affection he tries to tell himself he doesn’t want, is focus on the girls.  The hooking up.  He’s good at it, Isak knows.  He can get girls to smile as easily as he breathes, and they fall into his arms in droves.  It should be what he wants, but it feels like something’s lacking.  There’s touch, yes, but it’s not  _ right _ .  So Isak gets together with Sara, hoping that a ‘real’ relationship will provide some of what he’s so desperate for.  It’s … okay, he guesses.  But holding her never feels exactly right, and kissing her doesn’t make a difference either.  

“Mmmm, kiss me, sussebass,” Sara says, clinging onto Isak’s neck and simpering at him.  Her eyes are wide and her smile is beautiful.  From here, Isak can smell the lipgloss she’s wearing, a strawberry flavour that makes him a little nauseous with its too-sweet scent.  She’s wearing perfume, too, a sweet flowery one, and it reminds him a little of his mother’s when she used to hold him.  He closes his eyes against that particular memory.

Aware of all the other people around them, Isak complies and kisses Sara, but the whole time he’s thinking, ‘Is this all there is?’ because kissing really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, despite how attractive he knows Sara is.  It’s all kind of intellectual, Isak thinks.  Getting with girls, kissing them.  It’s nice, and being in a relationship gives him some sort of cred and makes him appear more normal ( _ less gay _ ), so he does it.  But he doesn’t  _ get _ it.  Why do people want to do this so much?  What do they get out of it?  Well, touch, he supposes.  He’s allowed to hug Sara, and in fact people seem happy when he does so he feels almost encouraged.  But it still doesn’t feel right.  It’s not even the way it was with Eva, and as nice as that was, even that hadn’t been what he really wanted.

The days pass, and Isak keeps kissing Sara, holding her in the schoolyard, and talking to her on facebook.  But none of it does anything for him.  The touch is there, and he guesses it’s a little better than the random girls he hooked up with in the past.  But it’s not as fulfilling as he’d thought it might be.  It’s not what he saw when Eva and Jonas would fall into each other.  It’s not what he sees when he watches the casual affection of the people around him.  

In frustration, Isak tries to logic himself out of this problem.  There’s no logical reason why he wants to hold people so badly, anyway.  And maybe it’s all about emotions; maybe they’re what affects him this way, but if that’s the case he really doesn’t think that’s fair.  They shouldn’t be allowed this sort of power over him.  You should basically be able to apply logic to things and have them work out.  Anyway, where would these kind of (frankly weird, if you consider everyone around him) thoughts come from?  In desperation, Isak chases the idea through incidents in his past until he hits on one.  

The day he’d turned seven, Isak had run to his parents in delighted expectation as soon as he woke up.  Laughing, they’d let him jump onto the bed with them, and he’d burrowed in under the blankets, giggling as his cold feet touched their warm legs and they squealed and squirmed away in mock protest.  But when he’d tried to throw his arms around them they’d pulled back, still smiling, and handed him his gift, putting distance between them into his hands along with the parcel and some cake.  The brightly wrapped box (and later the party they’d thrown, with his whole class invited for more cake and pirate-themed games) had distracted Isak, and it wasn’t until much later that he’d thought about and noticed the way his parents had slid so effortlessly out of holding him.  It hadn’t hurt.  Not then, anyway.  It had just seemed natural.  Perhaps, Isak thinks now, it really was natural, and this desire to be held is what’s odd and different.  He resolves to try harder to not need any of that stuff.  That stuff that isn’t manly ( _ gay... _ ).

Sara continues to cling, and Isak continues to go through the motions.  But the more he does it, the more he feels like he’s playing a game, and it’s one that he doesn’t feel like he’s winning.  There are still the sly comments ( _ are you gay? why do you only like gay songs? that’s really gay.  Gay … gay … gay... _ ), so the benefits of being in this relationship are starting to fade.  Any cred he’s gained is only surface deep, and when he scratches up against the other guys’ attitudes, Isak ends up bruised internally by the sting of what they really think.  

Added to that, the holding and the hugging just isn’t working for him.  The scent of Sara’s perfume is becoming cloying and oppressive, and her lip gloss tastes fake and unappealing when they kiss.  None of this is what Isak had imagined when he started seeing her, and he’s beginning to feel boxed in.

In despair, Isak sort of fades out of the relationship and back into the habit of hooking up with other girls.  But the more he does it, the less right it feels, and the more unhappy Isak gets.  Isak can’t logic his way out of this, either.  He can’t make it seem sensible or natural.  So, in an effort to make sense of it all, Isak withdraws, putting up a facade of happiness and confidence.  He manages to make people believe he has it all.  He almost convinces  _ himself _ that he has everything he needs, but deep down Isak still wants something more, something better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lovely Norwegian guru taught me 'sussebass' which means roughly 'kissy bear' and I was going to change it into English, but I kind of like the Norwegian, so there you have it.


	4. Sixteen years old, June 2016

“Ah, here’s my little manchild, come to use the facilities.”

Eskild’s voice is warm and filled with amusement, but Isak still flushes.  He knows this isn’t normal, this life.  He wishes he didn’t have to hide away, embarrassed and alone so much of the time.

“Shut up, Eskild,” he says.  “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can …”

“Oh, no no no.  That won’t work.  You are my protege, I’m your muse; you can’t leave when I’m just starting to work on so many of your horrible stinky quirks …”

Isak just rolls his eyes and heads for the bathroom.  He lets the warm water run over him and assesses his situation.  He’s sixteen, nearly seventeen, and his life is about as bad as it can possibly get.

There’s the guilt, of course, worming its way through his every waking thought.  The knowledge that he left his mother at home alone because he wasn’t strong enough ( _ isn’t  _ strong enough) to deal with her.  There’s the hatred that pours out of him when he remembers his father, ditching his mother and him, leaving them when she was so vulnerable.  There’s the fact that he’s starting to really own up, if only in his own head, to the idea that he’s not normal (gay; he’s so  _ gay _ ).  He’s so angry, all the time, and living in a dingy basement doesn’t make any of it better.

Groaning, Isak lets the water run cold.  He knows this is a stupid idea and that Noora will just get pissed off with Eskild for it, which is all sorts of totally unfair.  But he can’t bring himself to care.  He’s grateful, of course, to be out of the house with his mother, but his current circumstance can’t in any way be described as ideal.  His mother’s increasingly erratic behaviour had started to terrify Isak, and he’d become sick of begging his father for help and getting vague promises.  But that doesn’t change the way he feels about the situation he now finds himself in.

Do his parents miss him? he wonders now as the cool water slides off his body and he finally, reluctantly turns the taps off.  Do they ever wonder how he is or what he’s doing?  Part of him hopes they do, hopes their old words of love meant  _ something. _  But another part of him is scared that if they do care they’re just biding their time until they come to drag him back again.  To that house that’s nothing like a home.  Not anymore.

There’s a knock on the door, and Eskild’s voice comes through.  

“Isak?  It’s getting late.”  He sounds worried and his words are speedy.

“I’ll be out soon, Eskild,” Isak calls back.  

When he emerges, Eskild greets him with yet another pile of clothes.  Isak looks at them, then back up at Eskild.

“I don’t need those,” he says, trying to pour contempt into his tone but even he can hear the catch as his voice breaks on the words.

“You can stay up here, you know.”  Eskild’s voice is so kind, and Isak grimaces.  They have this conversation every time he uses the shower.  

He shakes his head, determined.  “No.  Noora … she can’t know.”

“She knows enough, Isak.  She found the stuff, you know that.  Just … it’ll be better if we can have you here.”

There’s compassion in his tone, and it’s so damn close to pity that Isak swallows against the nausea that overwhelms him.  That idea is unbearable.  No-one can know just how shitty his parents are, how awful things have become.  No-one can know he’s been reduced to living in a basement as a superior option to being home (not home; place to be).  It’s imperative that he keep up the facade even now.  Especially now.  The worst thing would be for people at school to know and to pity him.  It’s bad enough that Eskild does.

Pity, compassion, caring.  Whatever word you want to put on it, it hurts Isak.  It hurts because his parents don’t feel any of those things for him anymore, if they ever did.  It hurts because he should be stronger than this, he’s learned that over time.  His parents had made that clear so many times that it’s as natural as breathing now to just get through things on his own.  It isn’t just his parents, either.  Other people have made it blindingly obvious that Isak has only himself to rely on.  

When he and Jonas were thirteen and starting a new school , Isak was jittery with nerves and tension.  The tension thrummed through him, and all he wanted was a hug, something to tell him that he wasn’t alone.  He’d suggested hesitantly that they could do it, hug.  Just for old time’s sake, he’d said, now that they were starting a new phase of their life, but Jonas had scoffed.  

“We’re too old for that crap,” he’d said.  “That’s not really cool, is it?” and held his fist out instead.  

There was something odd in Jonas’s face when he’d said it, but Isak was too young to notice or to read it properly if he had.  Too young to understand what was coming between them.

So Isak had grimaced and complied with the unspoken request, pressing his fist against Jonas’s.  It wasn’t like they’d been huge huggers anyway, not even when they were much younger, but hearing his desire dismissed in such an explicit way had made Isak withdraw a little.  He’d never bothered to ask for a hug again.  Not when men don’t need hugs, not when it isn’t cool to want them, not when that sort of affection can be so easily misinterpreted ( _ gay _ ).

There have been too many times over the last few years that have hammered home to Isak that knowledge that he has to be self-sufficient.  Having to rely on Eskild is at least a little less awful than having to let Noora and everyone else know that he’s not coping, that he needs help.  But it’s still not great, and Isak tries not to take any more than he needs because he feels a desperate need to pay it all back sometime when he’s more sorted.  Because needing people and relying on people is a really bad idea.  You can’t trust anyone but yourself.

Eskild sighs and puts the clothes down.  He must see something of those swirling thoughts in Isak’s face because he reaches out and pulls him into his chest.

“What the fuck, Eskild?”

Isak pushes back, struggles to get away, holding himself as rigid as he can.

“Shhh, just relax.  I need a cuddle; let me have this.”

So Isak does.  If Eskild wants a random hug, then let him have it.  Isak lets his arms go around Eskild’s back, he lets himself sink into the comfort of another human’s embrace, he lets himself rest his head against someone else’s shoulder.  He lets someone else’s arms surround him.  It’s nice, different to Sara or even Eva.  There’s no performance here, no sense of getting a fix off someone else’s suffering.  There’s just care and peace.  Isak feels good, he realises, and it scares him a little.

To his horror, Isak can feel tears welling up in his eyes, as Eskild’s hands run soothing circles over his back.  He chokes them back as well as he can and finally he can hear the nonsense murmurings Eskild is making.  Suddenly suspicious, Isak pulls back, putting a distance between himself and Eskild to avoid giving into those feelings that threaten to overwhelm him.

“Okay, um.  So.”  He turns away so Eskild can’t see any betraying hint of moisture in his eyes.  “So I’m going to go to Jonas’s.”

Eskild’s face looks immeasurably sad and he nods as Isak looks at him quickly.  “Okay.  Text me when you need to come in, okay?”

“I will,” Isak says.

On impulse, he gives Eskild another quick hug before he rushes out the door.  Everything still feels shit, but that one small moment he’d given Eskild (or Eskild had given him) reminds Isak that there are good people out there, people who do care about each other.  He still intends to do things on his own, because that’s the only safe way to live, but the knowledge that people give a shit … well, that makes a small warm spot bloom inside his chest. It makes him feel almost like he has a place in the world, after all.


	5. Seventeen years old, early November 2016

Eventually, without Isak really noticing it happening, things start to change.  Isak sees a boy, and his heart seems to stop for a moment.  He talks to the boy, learns his name, and his heart speeds up.  It doesn’t occur to Isak to want the boy to touch him.  Not yet.  But there’s something, a frisson of energy that lights him up whenever their eyes meet.  And they meet often.  There’s an ease there that hasn’t been present with any of his other friends, not for a long time, and it’s not until he has it now that Isak realises exactly how glaringly it’s been missing from the rest of his life.  Slowly Isak allows himself to relax and have fun, to laugh and smile.  To look, really look, at another person.  To look with want, and to see that want reflected back.  

Today, he’s sitting in Biology with Sana, but his head isn’t really on his work.  Infuriatingly (because, honestly, what a cliche), it goes back to Even, to everything they’d been to each other for a few small hours.  Hours that seemed infinite at the time, even with the shadow of Sonja hanging over them.  

Sana clears her throat in a way that’s clearly designed to call attention to Isak’s own lack of attention.  

“Why are you so distracted these days?” she asks, petulance in her voice but a dimple in her cheek which belies the tone.

Isak scowls at her.  “I’m not distracted.”

“Mmmmm, okay.  So, what’s the answer to this question then?”

Forcing himself to focus, Isak reads the question and hits on an answer which makes Sana smirk and nod.  Sighing his relief as she moves on, Isak falls back into his daydream, remembering the moments he’d spent with Even over the weekend.

They’d kept looking right up til that Friday night, Isak’s body had continued to light up whenever Even was near (and he was near so often it was overwhelming), and eventually they’d kissed.  Kissed!  It felt new, like something had shifted inside him, but Isak still wasn’t prepared for  _ how _ overwhelming it all was.  The water should, theoretically, have grounded him, but it didn’t.  It made him feel untethered, free.  It was both a heady thought and a terrifying one.  Thankfully, Even was there to catch him, or some corny shit like that.  He’d been there, a safe place, a safe person, through the whole thing.  All the dancing they’d done around each other had culminated in that kiss, and it had felt both enlivening and secure.

Even more enthralling had been the time after that kiss.  They’d fallen onto Isak’s bed together, too cold and tired to do much more than kiss again that night, but Even had pulled Isak into his arms and it had felt so good.  So right in all the ways Sara, and even Eva, hadn’t been.  For the first time in a very long time, Isak had felt like he belonged somewhere.  There was warmth in the embrace, comfort.  Almost as if it had been waiting for this moment, his body molded itself to Even’s, slotting in next to him in a way that had felt natural.  Isak had given himself permission to be in the moment, with no thought of future or past.  He’d pushed everything to do with his parents away (will they still love him if they know?), his fears about himself (is he gay? Is that what all this means?) and how people will see him (like someone who will wear makeup and tights?) too.  He’d allowed himself to settle into the moment with Even, enjoying the perfect peace they had created in this one small bubble of smoke and warmth.

They’d talked, of everything and nothing, and all the while Isak remained soft and pliant, his body feeling so boneless it was like it was part of Even’s.  Not in any sexual way, but rather in the way that made him believe he was seen, noticed.  Cherished.  That he had a reason to be, that his body was more than a vessel to move him around.  That he could feel comfort and acceptance and peace in someone’s arms.  It was heady, that feeling.  So intoxicating that Isak had allowed himself to drown in it.

Warmth had surrounded him, and in those moments of peace, Isak had come home.  Thinking of it now, he knows that’s some of the corniest shit he’s ever come up with, but it’s true, so he can’t bring himself to scoff as he usually would, nor to force his thinking away from the idea.  For once, Isak feels like he’s  _ allowed _ to be corny.  There’s a thing, a something, developing between him and Even and it feels so right.  

“I’ve told Sonja about you, and we’ve decided to take a break.”

Even had said it, just this morning.  It had taken Isak’s breath away, this idea that someone had chosen him, that someone wanted to be with him.  Not just someone, either.  Even.  Even, whose embrace feels so right in all the ways that Sara, Eva and even Eskild just haven’t.  Even, whose scent is heady and intoxicating.  Even, who had seemed so distant and unattainable but is now within reach.

Isak sighs, and Sana raises one perfectly made up eyebrow at him.  “Something you want to share?”

Isak shakes his head vigorously.  No, he’s not willing to share this shining new thing with anyone.  Not Jonas, not the boys or Eva, and definitely not Sana, no matter how great she’s been lately.  It’s a weird mixture of fears.  On one hand he fears that this wondrous thing he’s been allowed to hold in his hands for such a short time might be snatched away from him like so much else has been, and is therefore keeping it to himself as a way of protecting it from outside forces.  On the other hand, there’s the worry that being different ( _ gay _ ) is somehow going to change the way people view him, and so he feels like he can’t say anything because it could change everything.  

Sana’s expression says a lot, but she just nods and drags his attention back to the text they’re supposed to be studying with one finger tapping irritably on the page.  Isak blushes.  She says so much with her eyes and it pisses him off.  But he can’t bring himself to say anything to her because his memory is filled with that talk they had just a few days ago.  Of everyone, she’s the one most likely to judge.  He can still hear her words, telling him that maybe being gay is a mental illness or a choice, which still makes him fear that maybe  _ he’s _ mentally ill or making a choice right now.  A fucking choice.  Though … there are moments when Isak thinks yeah, he really would choose this if it means he gets to keep Even and the way it feels to be with him.  Still.  He doesn’t think he can tell her, not if he wants to be sure to keep this tentative friendship they’ve built so painfully over the last few weeks.

So he lets his attention be dragged back to the page in front of him, and he forces his mind away from Even and the heady, giddy feeling he’d left Isak with this morning.  Focus, he’s focused.  He is.

“Okay, so.  It’s B, right?”

The smile Sana gives him is genuine, and they settle into their usual routine quickly after that.  Bickering over the answers and rolling eyes at each other.  It’s nice.  Isak feels almost happy here today, and after the last few months that feeling is a welcome one.  


	6. Seventeen years old, December 2016

“Hey, baby.” 

Isak smiles against Even’s mouth as he leans in for a kiss.  It’s a rare quiet moment at the party Vilde and Eskild had cooked up between them (and Isak knows he agreed to it, but sometimes he regrets that a little when it all gets a bit too much).  Isak is content to sneak a few moments with his beautiful boyfriend, however, which is why they’re here now in a spot that is miraculously free of other people.  It’s an opportunity Isak isn’t even going to consider missing.  He’s spent too long listening to his own cynical side; it’s time to push that voice aside.

“Hey yourself,” he says to Even now.  “How are you feeling?”

“Good.  I’m good today.”

Even pulls Isak against him, and Isak can feel the way his body melts into Even’s.  It would be embarrassing, frankly, if Even’s doesn’t do exactly the same thing.  Isak allows himself to sling his arms around Even’s neck and feels Even’s slide behind his own back.  He sighs in contentment, resting his head on Even’s shoulder, turning his nose in towards his neck, and breathing in the heady scent that just says ‘Even’ -- a scent that’s also coming to mean ‘home’, as sappy as Isak thinks that is.  It’s true, and the idea makes him happy so fuck anyone who sneers.

There are times, and this is one of them, that Isak feels like life is actually going his way.  He has stability and purpose; he feels happiness, as elusive as that had been just days earlier.  When he allows himself to think of it, the past haunts Isak, even in moments like these, but he’s coming to realise that the past makes the present and he wouldn’t (couldn’t) be where he is right now without everything that had happened before.

Everything had fallen apart, quickly and brutally after the first glorious weekend he’d spent with Even.  Isak had insulted Eskild, the one person who’d shown his loyalty and care for Isak through everything, and he’d retreated.  Even had backed away from him and finally went back to Sonja.  Isak, who had spent the previous few weeks protecting himself against exactly that eventuality, discovered that none of it mattered when his heart felt like it had been shattered into a million pieces.  No amount of preemptive protection had any effect on the way his heart felt in that moment.  

Then there were the long, restless days that had followed, each one another perfect pinprick of pain driving home the knowledge that Even didn’t want him.  Driving home that, as much as Isak had thought he knew, in reality he knew nothing.  

Worse, much worse, had been the sense of loss.  In the past Isak had yearned for something he didn’t quite know how to articulate; now he could articulate it very well.  He’d lived it, for those shining brief moments that one weekend.  So now that he’d experienced and then lost those feelings there was a physical ache where Even used to be.  It didn’t matter how much Isak railed at himself about how stupid that was, it had still been there, still cutting through him at odd moments of the day.

Now, looking back, Isak shivers in Even’s arms and feels them tighten around him briefly.  He smiles again, recognising Even’s instinctive ability to know when Isak is getting too caught up in his own head.

Rubbing his hands on Isak’s arms, Even pulls back to smile at him and says, “you okay?”

“Yeah.”  Isak sighs, a mixture of content and regret.  “I was just talking to Eva.”

“Yeah, I know.  I saw …”

Even’s grin makes Isak’s heart melt and he can’t help pressing another kiss to Even’s lips, but then he rolls his eyes and carries on, refusing any further acknowledgement.  “I feel … I feel like I missed a lot, you know?  Before you.”

Even raises his eyebrows in a silent question, and Isak shrugs.  “I was so fake then, you know?  I wish …”

“Hey.  Baby, you can’t do this.  Minute by minute. Remember?  That goes for you as well as me.”

Isak sighs, and lets his head fall back onto Even’s shoulder, his arms tightening slightly in recognition of Even’s words.  He knows it’s true and he’d meant every word of it when he’d told Eva that life is now, but the past still sits with him and he can’t help but worry about how he’s going to deal with everything.  It’s not like he’d done a great job last time.

It fills Isak with shame when he remembers how he’d reacted when Sonja had told him about Even’s mental illness.  He’s not sure, even now, how he could have been so stupid, and he wonders every day why on earth Even bothers to put up with him.  All Even had done in the aftermath of the disastrous hotel visit was show his love in so many ways, and how had Isak repaid that?  With scorn and derision.

As if he can hear Isak’s thoughts, Even whispers in his ear.  “You’re the best thing in my life, and you should never forget that.”

The warmth of his breath against Isak’s ear makes him shiver, and he gets that indefinable feeling of being at peace again.  This, here, with Even is always so good.  So Isak allows himself to fall into it again.  No second guessing.  Minute by minute, just like Even said.

“It’s nice,” Isak sighs finally, smooshing his nose against Even’s shirt because he’s trying to bury himself in his boyfriend, even though it’s sadly not working.

“What?  Ditching your friends in the middle of a party?”

Isak can’t even bring himself to be sarcastic, just tries to get even closer, and only stays upright because Even knows by now to grab him and hold tight when he gets like this.  “No, silly.  Being with you.  Hugging you.  S’nice.”

“Yeah it is,” Even agrees softly, and Isak feels his lips brushing his temple, the feeling barely a whisper over his hair, but powerful in its meaning.  He smiles at the feeling.  It reminds him of how he’d found Even, soul weary and almost defeated, at the school one bitterly cold night.

As much as Isak had believed he knew exactly what he was doing (thought he had fully accepted himself) before then, he realised now that he hadn’t.  It was only that moment when he’d deliberately gone to find Even, willing to fight him for his own soul, that Isak had truly accepted everything about himself.  His parents had welcomed him, he’d been in his mother’s element in the church, and yet it had all felt so empty without Even.  So going to him had been almost an instinct.

“You are not alone,” Isak had said, and it’s only now that he realises he was saying it to himself as much as to Even.  Neither of them is alone, and both of them will be able to find their way, so long as they are there and support each other.  The hug they’d shared then had felt like a benediction, a line drawn under all that had come before and a promise for the future.  Thinking of that now, Isak realises he’s been trying to live in the past when he doesn’t need to.

“You’re not alone,” Isak whispers again now, letting the words come out almost as a breath rather than enunciated sound.

In reply, Even squeezes him tighter.  He pulls back a little so he can look Isak in the eyes, then leans in to rest his forehead against Isak’s.  They stay like that, noses almost pressed together and breathing each other in, until a clatter from the living room pulls them back to their senses and they lose their bubble.  

Smiling, Isak takes Even’s hand and pulls him towards the sounds of merriment.  Even though it feels like an imposition of sorts to be interrupted in this way, Isak feels reinvigorated just from these small moments he’s been able to steal with Even.  

As the noise of the party crashes over him again, he smiles.  He’s not sure when Even’s presence became so important to his sense of stability and security, but he’s happy it has.  He knows, too, that he needs to live more in the now and try not to let his head get stuck in the past.  Here, with Even and his friends, Isak feels like that’s not going to be such a hard thing to do after all.


	7. Eighteen years old, June 2017

Feeling contented, Isak looks around him.  It blows him away, sometimes, that all these people care enough about him to do something like this.  It’s his birthday but he feels like it’s something deeper than that.  He’s snuggled into Even, his arms a pleasant weight at Isak’s hips and his warmth seeping through the light jacket Isak wears as he leans against him. Their friends are all spread out in a raggedly cluster of small groups around them.  

There’s Chris, her shiny jacket catching the glints of sunlight that beam through the trees, and her booming laugh echoing around the clearing.  She’s talking to Vilde, who’s perched on Magnus’s knee, with her eyes sparkling as she gesticulates about whatever new passion she’s talking about.  Magnus gazes at her with adoring eyes and a calm, gentle smile.  Isak smiles himself as he thinks about how much less jumpy and invasive he’s become lately, even if he does still overshare about his sex life.

To Isak’s left, Noora sits laughing with Sana.  Her eyes occasionally stray to William who’s sitting with his back against a nearby table, his eyes almost closed as he gazes at her.  She smiles whenever she catches his eye, but her focus is on Sana, who looks radiant as she laughs aloud.  That laugh carries across the short distance to Isak and he grins at Sana, raising his eyebrows in question.  She shakes her head before turning back to Noora.

Jonas, Eva and Mahdi are sprawled on the grass, their legs stretched out and arms thrown across eyes as they trace clouds in the sky with their expressive hands.  The ease and happiness Isak can track in Jonas’s face as he turns to Eva makes Isak’s heart ache in the very best of ways (he thinks -- hopes, maybe -- that they could be softening towards each other.  Believing that relieves the pressure that sometimes still sits on Isak’s heart when he thinks about how he acted so long ago), and he sighs softly.

“You all good, baby?” Even asked behind him, his breath whispering over Isak’s ear and making him shiver.

“Mmmmm,” Isak says, feeling contentment sitting in his chest like an old friend.  “Thank you for doing this.”

“Everything for you,” Even says, and it should be the cheesiest, most cliche thing, but the way Even says it gives it weight and meaning.  If Isak asked, he knows Even really would do anything for him.  It’s a good thing it’s mutual.

In response, Isak allows himself to settle back into Even even further.  It’s so nice to feel this comfortable in his own skin, and it’s been a long time coming.

Isak remembers the way he used to feel, so shuttered and wary of everyone and everything.  How bitter he was about his parents and their actions, about his sexuality and the way he expected to be treated.  Here, now, it all seems like a bad dream, and Isak thinks that’s probably the best way to look at it: as a dream, or a time best sent into the archives of his mind.

His relationship with his parents has improved to an extent where he can feel at home with either of them again.  Gone are the bitter, angry thoughts Isak spewed into his mind whenever he thought about them.  They’ve been replaced with something more cheerful and peaceful.  His relationship with them is not perfect, probably never will be, but Isak has a sense of family again.  It’s nice.  The tentative hugs of Christmas have strengthened into embraces that have substance, and Isak feels a sense of calm with the two of them now.

There’s a disturbance at the edge of the park, drawing Isak’s attention away from his memories and back into the present.  Eskild has appeared, dragging Linn by her arm.  She looks resigned to his actions, but has a  smile on her face which suggests she doesn’t mind it much at all.  Isak pulls away from Even after a brief peck on the lips, to go and greet his new guests.  Linn’s smile widens as she spots him and waves, but she heads away to sit with Vilde and Magnus before he reaches them.

Eskild, on the other hand, drags Isak into a hug.  Isak allows himself to hug back, remembering how uneasy he’d been the first time Eskild had done this.  By now, however, he’s used to Eskild’s hands-on method of guru-ing, and he laughs as Eskild squeezes him as tightly as he can.

“You’re so old now, baby Isak.  Can I even call you a baby anymore?  Here you are all grown up, with an apartment and a boyfriend and everything.  And eighteen!  You’re practically an old man settled into that house, never coming out anymore.”

Isak lets him prattle, smiling indulgently as he does so, but he can’t let that last barb go by.  “I do come out.  I’m out right now!”

“Your one birthday event does not count, and you know it.”

Isak rolls his eyes fondly and scoffs.

“But I guess,” Eskild continues, his voice musing and his eyes on Even, “if I had a hunk like that at home I might not go out so much either.”

Blushing, Isak follows his gaze and catches Even looking at him.  It almost takes his breath away, the way Even does that -- stares at Isak as if he was the most precious thing on the planet.  Isak smiles.  Maybe he doesn’t go out that much, certainly he doesn’t go to as many parties as he had when he was feeling sad and so lonely.  Partly that’s Even and the way he’s looking as he stares at Isak (making Isak want to go home right now if he’s honest, which he refuses to share with Eskild because fuck knows what he might think, or worse say, if he knows what Isak’s thinking), and partly that’s because he feels happier, more settled.  

There’s less pressure (from himself, mostly) to playact the role of party guy, woman’s man.  Now, Isak can be whoever he wants to be, and who he wants to be is apparently the guy who’s happy at home with his boyfriend, or in a park with his friends.  Someone who doesn’t have to hide behind a mask to feel worthy.  Someone who isn’t afraid to be exactly who he is.

So Isak laughs now, not letting Eskild’s comments rankle.  “He does make home pretty interesting, yeah,” he says, patting Eskild once more on the arm, and ignoring Eskild’s faux-scandalised gasp as he heads back to sit with Even again.

If Isak could choose anywhere he could be today, he’d choose to be right here.  He can’t imagine anything better than this.  After so long second guessing every move, Isak is finally happy to admit that he doesn’t have to be the perfect son, the perfect student, the perfect friend.  He just has to be himself.

With another contented sigh, he settles back against Even, feels his lips brushing his hair and tightens his grip on the arms which obligingly make their way around his waist.  In Even’s arms he’s found a way to be grounded, and experiences a welcome he’s never really felt before.  But it’s more than that.  In those arms, Isak has been able to push himself to work through his own issues and problems.  Having Even at his back (literally at times) has allowed Isak to really open himself up to other people and ideas, too.  Knowing he has support, Isak has been able to branch out on his own.

“I want to say thank you,” he says now as he turns to look Even in the eyes.

“For what?”  Even’s eyes crinkle as his smile lights up his face.

“For everything.  For being you,” Isak says.

Even smiles again.  “Happy birthday, baby,” he says.  “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They sit there, wrapped in each other, kissing languidly as the chatter of their friends surrounds them.  Everything feels possible now, and Isak is happy.

It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's the end. It's been fun looking at Isak's mindset through the series. I'm busy outlining a Jonas pov of these two, but that might take a while to come to fruition.
> 
> In the meantime, come chat on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rumpelsnorcack). I love meeting people.


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